Baixa House

A home away from home. Perhaps I should say an apartment. Baixa House in Lisbon, Portugal is a boutique hotel of individual self-catering apartments over several floors, each with its own stylish interior. Bright white walls, scrubbed floors, vintage finds and beautiful light flooding in. Forget the holiday. I’d want to live there permanently. Via Welcome Beyond.

Iris Restolho says:

September 11, 2014

A "Baixa de Lisboa" – Lisbon Downtown, is simply beautiful. I always want to live there in an old building like this, but is so expensive that it wasn't possible till now.

Did you know that this type of building dated from XVIII century, after a big earthquake all downtown of Lisbon was restored and this type of construction are earthquake proof. But the most fun (incredible) is that all the streets of major part of this new Lisbon are laid in piles of pine over the water of the river Tagus. The Marquis of Pombal attempted to gain space for the city conquering the river.

Here, the medieval city gave way to wide streets two outings, in ruling, with the first public sanitation network in the country. The new buildings have significant technical improvements, such as firewalls and pombalina cage.

The anti fire walls are perpendicular to the facades, with 0.5 m thick and without any opening, which divide the buildings from the ground floor to leave above the rooftops. These walls were primarily designed to prevent the spread of fire from surrounding buildings.

The pombalina cage is a technique of anti-seismic construction worldwide innovative. Based on the methods of shipbuilding, the cage consists of a three-dimensional structure of wood covered by masonry walls, which calms the energy transmitted by an earthquake, without causing considerable damage in the building. The inner frame is connected to the outer timber walls using metal parts.